Architectural review: California Academy of Sciences

Share this:

A composite 360 degree panoramic image of the "Water Planet" inside of the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco on Monday, September 15, 2008. It is the Smithsonian of the West, the oldest natural history museum west of the Mississippi River. A 150-year-old institution where Charles Darwin worked, and where generations of Bay Area school children went on field trips. On Sept. 27, the California Academy of Sciences will open a gleaming new $484 million home in Golden Gate Park. (Nhat V. Meyer/Mercury News)

The Rainforests of the World exhibit draws members during a pre-opening tour of the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, Calif. Sept. 18, 2008. The bottom level of the 90-foot wide diameter dome includes a walk-thru tunne. The Academy, reopens to the public Sept. 27, 2008. (Karl Mondon/Contra Costa Times)

Joel Ergood, of Walnut Creek, Calif., holds his 5-year-old son, James, up for a better look at a Tyrannasourus Rex skeleton during a members only tour of the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, Calif. Sept. 18, 2008. Other Ergood family members include Claire, 8, Andrew, 5, and his wife Elizabeth. The facility reopens to the public Sept. 27, 2008. (Karl Mondon/Contra Costa Times)

A composite 360 degree panoramic image inside the Tusher African Center of the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco on Monday, September 15, 2008. It is the Smithsonian of the West, the oldest natural history museum west of the Mississippi River. A 150-year-old institution where Charles Darwin worked, and where generations of Bay Area school children went on field trips. On Sept. 27, the California Academy of Sciences will open a gleaming new $484 million home in Golden Gate Park. (Nhat V. Meyer/Mercury News)

A composite 360 degree panoramic image outside of the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco on Monday, September 15, 2008. It is the Smithsonian of the West, the oldest natural history museum west of the Mississippi River. A 150-year-old institution where Charles Darwin worked, and where generations of Bay Area school children went on field trips. On Sept. 27, the California Academy of Sciences will open a gleaming new $484 million home in Golden Gate Park. (Nhat V. Meyer/Mercury News)

A composite 360 degree panoramic image inside the "Rainforest" of the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco on Monday, September 15, 2008. It is the Smithsonian of the West, the oldest natural history museum west of the Mississippi River. A 150-year-old institution where Charles Darwin worked, and where generations of Bay Area school children went on field trips. On Sept. 27, the California Academy of Sciences will open a gleaming new $484 million home in Golden Gate Park. (Nhat V. Meyer/Mercury News)

The new California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park is a surprisingly timid design. Squint your eyes, and it’s hard to tell that the old Academy building, a mix of several wings dating back to 1916, isn’t still standing across from the elegant old Spreckels Bandstand and the new de Young Museum. The only notable change is a trim of thin glass trellis, embedded with solar cells.

Otherwise the new building, by famous architect Renzo Piano and set to open to the public on Saturday, is roughly the same size, height and color as the old one. It still presents a long, white, flat wall of stone and concrete to the Concourse. Visitors still enter to an open-air courtyard.

Yet except for half of that long facade (retained from the original building), it’s an entirely new structure built to 21st—century standards for energy efficiency and intended to house an entirely new science museum, aquarium, planetarium and scientific labs. After damage in the 1989 Loma Prieta quake — and with declining attendance in science institutions nationwide — the Academy needed to be updated.

Strangely, the most highly publicized — and structurally astonishing — aspect of this new building is virtually invisible from the ground: the 2﻿1/2-acre living meadow, sculpted into hills and valleys, on the roof. The Academy’s vivid symbol of commitment to saving the planet’s resources through green design is almost thrown away.

Underplaying the design may have been a better decision than to create another slouching, lumbering grandstander like the new de Young, by architects Herzog and de Meuron, who recently gained international attention for their design of the Olympic Stadium in Beijing. San Francisco’s insistence on choosing name-brand architects has not paid off at the de Young, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art by Mario Botta, or the recent Jewish Museum by Daniel Libeskind.

But Renzo Piano is capable of being extraordinarily inventive in creating forms. In bold statements at Paris’ 1977 Pompidou Center (a daring building with its structure and piping turned inside out) and the 1998 Tjibaou Cultural Center in New Caledonia (like a fleet of aboriginal dhow sailboats), Piano proves he can break with the strictly rational shapes of mainstream modern architecture to mine natural, cultural and psychological sources — which have much to do with our pleasure and connection with buildings.

The Academy’s roof meadow itself is conceptually beautiful. Its undulating surface functions as part of the building’s integrated natural ventilation system, which dramatically reduces its need for mechanical air conditioning. Its sod roof and plants create an ecosystem that cools the building and﻿ supports birds and insect life. It is an admirable billboard for the fragile balance of plants, animals and humans on planet Earth. It just doesn’t add anything to the impact of the architecture.

In comparison, the steel sunscreen that drapes like a blanket over last year’s San Francisco Federal Building, another local green design landmark, is both environmentally functional and architecturally expressive. It is a stronger piece of integrated design.

The Academy roof looks like a piece of natural topography — or like a carpet laid over a collection of softballs and basketballs. Two of those balls beneath the carpet are major exhibits that actually do take the form of spheres. The Morrison Planetarium and a glass-enclosed Rain Forest form the twin four-story globes that dominate the interior gallery. Piano has taken these as the trope, the conceit, the imaginary reason that causes the roof to take its unconventional shape.

It’s quite illogical — the steel beams that structure the roof are of course not soft and malleable as the roof form suggests, but this bit of serious whimsy creates a surreal and suggestive architecture as a refreshing alternative to strict (and boring) functionalism.

Besides the roof, most of the Academy’s green design does not draw attention to itself, however. The broad exterior concrete walls serve passively to absorb heat slowly during the day (keeping the interior cool) and then releasing that heat through the cool, often foggy nights.

The positions of windows and operable skylights direct air naturally through the building, with high-tech help, as at the San Francisco Federal Building: computer-controlled sensors and motors sense the temperature and breeze inside and outside the building, and trigger windows and skylights to open or shut as needed to keep air circulating.

The glass globe Rain Forest exhibit is a tour de force that puts you in the middle of a natural habitat. Inside, a spiral ramp lets you walk up through the branches of the trees, while the tunnel through the aquarium beneath allows you to walk beneath the rain forest river. Another spectacular feature is the enormous picture window view into the ocean and coral reef environments.

The African Center has been completely re-created; the original classically vaulted structure over the dioramas of the African veld was too rotten to preserve after seven decades, so the entire room was carefully documented and rebuilt in new materials to original specifications. The new twist: At the end is a display of live penguins, eerily situated among the long-dead animals.

At the Steinhart Aquarium, the live alligators are still there — a thrilling, chilling exhibit that will remain unforgettable to every 8-year-old who walks through — as it has for decades.

More in News

SAN JOSE -- Grenades were discovered at an estate sale Monday, prompting the evacuation of about 10 homes near the San Jose Country Club, according to the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office. Deputies were called to the 300 block of Gordon Avenue, near Greenside Drive, about 4:10 p.m., said Sgt. Rich Glennon. Get breaking news with our free mobile app....